


Tracking down a goblin

by LadyBinx



Series: Lucinda Baker [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 12:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9122830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBinx/pseuds/LadyBinx
Summary: Lucinda has to track down a Goblin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I set my friend a challenge a few years ago to write me a story set within the HP world that did not include the Golden Trio. These are those stories.

The tube train rattled along to its last stop with a frustratingly lazy, casual speed. The doors slid open and the tired-looking passengers all got off, eager not to be stuck on the train when the doors beeped, slid shut again and the train entered the tunnel into the unknown stretch of track where it would turn around and start travelling in the opposite direction down the line. I’ve stayed on the train while it does this several times, and it’s just a four minute turnaround in a pitch black tunnel. Apart from the absence of any other passengers, which isn’t that unusual, it’s just like any other train ride. But in this carriage, on this track, I intended to send the train on a very unusual ride.

There is a sticker on the arm of one of the chairs in the rearmost carriage that I tapped with my wand and a complicated magical mechanism was activated. Since the driver was a muggle, he was shielded from seeing the rearmost carriage I was riding in being disconnected from the train in front of it. The lights went out, leaving me in darkness for a few seconds, lit only by the strip-lighting of the train ahead of it. As my carriage gradually slowed down, increasing the distance from the train still rocketing down the tunnel in front of it, I felt the carriage lurch and swing onto a separate track. The train in front of me disappeared into its branch of the tunnel and I was left in darkness. The lights racing past on the walls, splashing illumination through the windows, told me that my carriage was now speeding up. Then I could feel the sudden acceleration as we lurched forward into a steep descent, the lights flashing past as the wheels started screeching on the tracks.

I was clinging to the armrests with white knuckles, anxiety giving way to genuine fear. I screamed as the track veered abruptly to the left and right, the carriage’s momentum lifting it off one set of wheels and threatening to derail. It slammed back down onto the tracks, sending sparks flying up past the windows. None of this slowed it down, and I was losing track of how far I’d descended into the darkness when I felt the momentum shift. The carriage was suddenly headed upwards at a steeper and steeper angle. In a few seconds I was going up vertically, and I clung to the pole next to me to stay in my seat. Drink cans and bundled up newspapers fell past me, and my large black handbag dangled from my shoulder. If it hadn’t been securely clasped, the contents would have spilt out into the air. A few seconds later we were upside down, and although I was hanging onto the pole I still fell against the ceiling. We were descending again, completing the full circle, and I dangled over the carriage below me as gravity wrenched at my shoulders. Finally we were heading downwards at a more reasonable angle and I fell to the floor painfully. If the loop-de-loop was someone’s idea of fun, or a hilarious prank, I would hunt them down and make them suffer.

I picked myself up, dusting off my long dark coat that went all the way down to my flat-soled leather boots, keeping myself steady with difficulty until I sat back in the seat, one hand on the pole next to me and one clinging to the armrest like if I let go the world would fall away – if there was another loop then that’s exactly what would happen. There was another lurch and the carriage nearly derailed again, but I had stopped screaming and was gritting my teeth in wide-eyed terror.

Eventually, the carriage slowed down and rattled to a gradual, gentle stop without even a bump. The strip lighting in the carriage flickered back on, the doors whooshed open and blessed, glorious silence reigned. Trying to control the shaking in my legs, I stood up and smoothed out my coat, disembarking from the train carriage with slow dignity.

I found myself in a distorted version of a tube station, as if someone had been trying to recreate one. They had carved the tubular chamber out of the naked rock, including the surface of the platform. With scuffed yellow paint, they had marked out the line that the robotic voice always insists you stand behind. They had also painted a red circle with a blue bar, but the name of the station was written in an alphabet I didn’t recognise. I followed the exit sign through a short tunnel and came to a bigger chamber, hearing the train carriage screech away behind me. I wondered how quickly it would go up the steep incline, and whether something like this was the reason that tube trains sometimes stopped for minutes at a time – to magically slot the missing carriages back into a train.

The bigger chamber held a tube map painted on one rough stone wall, and a goblin sitting behind a tall ticket booth. The map was hopelessly out of date, and the paint colours had faded. There were several stations included that aren’t on the normal map, but all the station names were in the same alphabet that I couldn’t read. I assumed it was Gobbledegook, the goblin language. I’m fluent in several other languages, but I can only speak a few awkward phrases of Gobbledegook, and I can’t read it. The goblin at the ticket booth looked down at me idly, distracted from his newspaper. You can understand why such a short, bureaucratic and officious race would insist on such high thrones to emphasise any little bit of power they have. He was wearing a blue jacket with golden epaulettes, with a golden watch-chain on his navy waistcoat and a little blue bell-hop hat with gold striping.

“You got a ticket?” the goblin asked in English, in a curiously cockney accent.

“Yes,” I replied in Gobbledegook, trying to ingratiate myself. He said something that I didn’t understand, and I immediately regretted trying to show off. “Sorry?”

“Let’s see it then,” he said in English. I dug into my pocket and fished out the tube ticket I’d bought. He looked at it down his long, waxy, lumpen nose with a disdainful expression. “This is no good. You’ll have to pay the fine,” he sighed wearily.

“That’s a Day Travelcard,” I said, still dazed from the ride down here.

“It doesn’t cover the  _ under _ -underground, see?” he said, and handed the ticket back to me.

“Well, there was no option to buy a ticket for the under-underground on the machine I was paying at,” I said.

“Not my fault,” he sniffed, “You still have to pay the fine.”

“Can’t I buy a ticket here?” I asked.

“Well, yes, you’ll have to. And pay the fine.”

“What?”

“A ticket to get in, and the fine for not having the ticket, see?”

“But you can’t buy this ticket anywhere else, can you,” I said, smiling as I finally saw the goblin’s ruse.

“That makes no difference,” he said, looking at me down his nose from his high booth.

“I’ll take one ticket then, please.”

“A return ticket is three galleons, sixteen sickles,” he said gleefully, “And the fine is fifteen galleons, sixteen sickles and twenty-eight knuts. There’s a two sickle surcharge for asking about the total.”

“Here’s four galleons. Give me the ticket,” I said, digging the money out of my handbag.

“Yeah, and the rest,” he said, keeping his hand outstretched with the golden coins twinkling in his palm.

“Hold on while I find it,” I said, and spent five minutes purposefully rummaging through my handbag, watching the goblin grow increasingly frustrated. There was nobody else in the station, nor any trains on the track, but I could tell he wanted to get back to his newspaper. Eventually he tried to speed me up by preparing my ticket for me. “Oh, is that my ticket?” I said, reaching out my hand. Without thinking, he handed it to me. I smiled triumphantly and walked away from the booth, headed for the exit.

“Hey! Wait a second!” he said angrily, but I ignored him. With deceptive speed he waddled down from his booth and caught the end of my coat in his three-fingered black-nailed hand.

“Yes?” I said, looking down at him.

“You haven’t paid the fine!”

“What fine?” I asked, grinning.

“Fifteen galleons, sixteen sickles and twenty-eight knuts! For not having a ticket!”

“But I have a ticket,” I said, producing it for him and waving it in front of his face. He stared at it with mute anger as I turned and walked out of the station quickly, before he could think of anything else to say.

The space outside the tube station was nearly pitch black. As I hurried into the darkness to escape the ticket master, I pulled a pair of metal goggles on a black leather strap out of my bag and slid them over my eyes. I had at least been forewarned of this, at least, and amongst some of the magical devices I’d borrowed from my friend William were a pair of goggles whose enchanted lenses would let me see in the dark. Everything looked strangely lit, but it was still as clear as daylight.

In the massive underground chamber in front of me, the stone had been carved into tiers over many patient generations, and those ancient stone dwellings had been added to with a dense patchwork of buildings. There were a few grand buildings made of modern stone, several timber shacks with flashing neon signs that stood out in the darkness and dozens of ornate vintage shop-fronts covered with columns and floral lumps and ornately carved window frames. Goblins hurried up and down the streets, bustling about their business with a quiet, grim-faced determination wearing tight-collared, dark clothes. The smell was appalling; the humid, stale air stank of bodily fluids and domestic waste, and a thousand other unnameable organic materials. This was the goblin’s capital city, hidden far beneath London in their ancestral caverns. The proud, secret city of Lin’Big.

The goblins hurrying through the ‘streets’ all gave me astonished looks. Few witches and wizards have ever come to this city except for union negotiations and large business deals – mainly we tend to deal with country goblins that live in little villages and hamlets, above ground in the middle of nowhere. Seeing a human walking around in the streets of their city must have been slightly disconcerting for them. Quite a few of them gave me angry glances, and once or twice I saw one stop in the street to stare at me with narrow, suspicious eyes before hurrying off the way he or she had come.

I wish I had just been able to send a letter, and not come to this place in person. But the goblin I was looking for named Nornuk would never have answered it. He had worked with William on an important project, and it was urgent that he be found once more to help with another one. William seemed to think this goblin was the only one who could do it. Unfortunately, William had managed to offend the goblin’s stubborn pride, and goblins aren’t fond of humans at the best of times. In the past decades, the goblins had found many tiny offences to blow up into major diplomatic incidences, and William’s theft of Nornuk’s apparently innovative academic rune-work had been another. Luckily for William, the scandal had been ignored by all but a few wizards who hadn’t cared anyway. The goblins had clearly cried wolf far too many times by now. Unluckily for William, and for me, this had irritated the goblins even further. Getting Nornuk to help William once more wouldn’t just be a matter of matching his price – it would be a work of delicate diplomacy, expert manipulation and subtle negotiation. That’s why I had decided to come in person, and alone.

I walked through several of the tall, long caverns lined with Victorian-style shops. The goblins needed very little street lighting, and with my magical goggles neither did I, letting me drink in the sights of Lin’Big as I strode along. I always take the time to appreciate non-human cultures. They’re so alien, and yet sometimes so familiar. I spotted goblin policemen in tall round hats with a silver point, harassing a raggedy-looking goblin with torn ears who was turning out his pockets. A bundle of goblin children scurried around a wide matriarchal goblin woman dressed in a dowdy black coat and gigantic hat with wax fruit, flowers and a stuffed duck. There was a barrow-man selling burgers made of meat. I couldn’t tell what it was from the menu, but there were pictures of rats and bats on the cart. He tried thrusting a forkful at me, reaching up high over his head to wave the uncooked meat in my face and shout something in Gobbledegook. I gave him a knut and waved him away, which confused him so much that he kept pursuing me down the street, wheeling his cart along behind me and shouting in Gobbledegook at me.

Eventually I found the building I was looking for. It was a gigantic golden door framed by white marble, set into the wall of one cavern and bordered on either side by quite fancy shops selling clothing and elegant stationary. The filigree and garish baroque architecture had been restrained here, giving way to a simple, classy elegance. There was a sign over the door – gold lettering set into the white marble that glittered with some unknown quality. The vendor of the mystery meat had followed me all the way, still hauling his cart and proclaiming something loudly. He looked from me to the building, and then back to me. He seemed to look me up and down for the first time, although given his height it was more up than down. He decided I was no longer worth it, and scurried off with his cart rattling behind him.

With all the cultures and societies that have developed on the planet Earth, many systems of ownership have come about. Possibly the most complicated is that of the goblins. They believe that a craftsman is the true and rightful owner of everything they create, even when that thing is sold on further. With every subsequent resale, the craftsman is due a commission, and if the owner dies then the artefact is returned to its maker in order to be sold again. In the case of services it becomes even more complicated, especially when that service is education or training. Every big goblin family, company, corporation or clan – including Gringotts – has their own vault containing all these bills of sale, proofs of ownership, claims and counter-claims and every bit of bureaucracy. Of course, nine tenths of the goblin world doesn’t belong to some big organisation, and even those that do like to keep several copies. This is a lot of paperwork. Storing that paperwork is a backbone of goblin economy, and the core of that backbone is the building in front of me. The name translates as the Lin’Big Library of Records.

I went through one of the small golden side-doors into the reception area. One of the goblin receptionists looked up at me, and I saw the brief look of surprise before she returned to her habitual scowl. I wondered whether it was surprise at a human, or surprise at the large goggles covering the upper half of my face. I pulled them up onto my forehead.

Technically everyone has a right to the access of any of the records and every bit of paperwork can be viewed for a reasonable fee, but in practise no human ever comes here. The receptionist had large studs in her massive ears, lipstick optimistically applied to her misshapen waxy lips and grotesquely large eyelashes above her little black beady eyes. As is the goblin way, she was at a tall desk peering down at me, her quill poised in her hand to continue writing as soon as I stopped bothering her.

“May I help?” she asked in English with a polished accent.

“I’m looking for Nornuk,” I said simply.

“We have several men named Nornuk. What’s his last name?” she asked.

Goblin’s last names are assigned based on personality qualities and reputation, like some sort of ancient cultural business card. Nornuk, despite his genius with arithmancy and wormhole-related magic, wasn’t massively renowned and could afford to change his name regularly.

“I’m told he’s called Nornuk the Nasty,” I said, which for goblins is like ‘John Smith’.

“What were his previous names?” she sighed.

“Nornuk the Third and Nornuk of the North,” I said, struggling to remember the various names that I’d been told he had used decades ago.

“You mean Nornuk the Wizard?” she said with another sigh, closing the folder of names.

“Nornuk the Wizard?”

“He’s been called that ever since he came back from the surface, working for you people on that big monstrous waste of gold that you shot into the sky,” she said disdainfully and turned in her chair, reaching for a massive file of papers from the shelves behind her.

“That’s the guy.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Yes, Nornuk the Wizard.”

“Do you want his patents, copyrights, ownership papers, birth certificate, credit report, bill receipts, travel records, tax records, health records or school report?” she said, sounding bored with the list even in a foreign language.

“None of that,” I said, “I’d rather know where the man himself is, please.”

“The man himself?”

“Yes, the actual man. Nornuk the Wizard in person. To talk to him. I was told he works here?”

“Oh, I see. Fifth basement, Department of Storage Research,” she said as she replaced the thick folder behind her.

“How do I get there?”

“Follow the signs,” she said, waving vaguely at the tall board next to the lifts whose instructions and descriptions were all also in Gobbledegook.

“And what do the signs say?” I asked pointedly. The receptionist stared at me like I’d slapped her, and turned in her chair once more. She handed me a leaflet, a folded map of every floor of the institution. It was also in Gobbledegook. “This map doesn’t help me,” I said.

“The translated version is one sickle, seven knuts,” she said.

I considered trying to con her out of the map, but for the sake of a silver sickle I didn’t want to waste my time. I handed over the money, digging it out of my handbag once more, and snatched the map from her. I strode to the lift, pushed the button and waited for it to arrive, shooting one withering glance at the receptionist. As the lift arrived with a cheerful ding and the doors slid open, I had to duck under the low doorway and bend my head beneath the short ceiling. Luckily the lift was at least empty, because as the doors slid shut I realised there were no buttons. I’ve seen goblins perform magic without using a wand, so this must be one of those panels. I took out my wand and tapped it against the blank panel, and the lift immediately started shooting downwards. I tapped it again and the lift stopped suddenly. I was quite keen not to go on another roller coaster ride, especially not in a much smaller metal box with no windows and no way out.

I tried stroking the panel slowly with my wand, hoping the control system would be that intuitive. Sure enough, I was moving downwards at much more relaxed pace. And then I discovered that every wall of the elevator was a window when I descended through the roof of a massive chamber. It was several stories deep, lined with marble shelves and gold highlights that shone in the darkness. Some of the shelves were honeycombs of hexagons to accommodate thick scrolls rather than books and elegant leather box-files. Each stack of shelves was separated by a column, and each of them mounted with a golden rail that supported a lift. Goblins were moving up and down these lifts with concentrated looks on their faces, carrying scrolls and files. The lift descended the full length of its glass chute very slowly, but I didn’t want to hurry it. I drifted past the floor of the chamber, covered with rich marble tables with more golden highlights, where goblins were working on the papers and documents.

The next floor was the same structure, but the materials were poorer - wood and silver replaced marble and glass, and ladders on wheels had replaced the lifts. The chamber below that was the same, but it was made of plain wood. It continued this way for several more chambers, and I was starting to become amazed how deep this place went. There were also horizontal shafts leading off the vertical one I was descending through, so I assumed there were more chambers to the sides. Eventually the library caverns came to an end and I was descending through a normal lift shaft. Outside the doors, corridors slid past while I tried to make sense of the map. The honeycombed maze of bureaucracy was furnished with potted mushrooms, water coolers and what looked like Gobbledegook motivational posters of goblins focussing on their tasks.

I got out on what I thought was the right floor, and wound my way to the Department of Storage Research in the low ceilings, banging my head several times. I’m not a very tall woman but here, I felt like a giant. The corridor walls were starting to look slightly less freshly painted, the potted mushrooms were dustier and more deformed, and the doors were far less grand. I followed the map all the way to a dead end at the very corner that had a plain wooden door with some badly stencilled lettering on it. The map told me this should be the Department of Storage Research.

I knocked on the door and waited. I knocked again just as it was opened by a goblin wearing thick glasses that magnified his beady eyes into large black circles, blinking up at me in astonishment. He looked me up and down, and I saw his eyes linger over my hips and legs as if he could see anything beneath my long coat. He said something in Gobbledegook, but I didn’t understand.

“Nornuk?” I asked.

“Nornuk?” he replied.

“Nornuk the Wizard?”

He looked puzzled and opened the door, inviting me inside.

The Department of Storage Research was almost like every research department I’ve ever seen. It was littered with paperwork and bits of paper pinned to boards. Chalk boards were covered with scribbles and since this was a goblin research department, there was also the smell of smelting silver and burning solder. Small personal smelters and furnaces were on some of the desks, and the room rang out to the dings and pings of ongoing engraving. The room was cramped, even for goblins. The goblin who had let me in showed me to one desk in the corner that was littered with little hoops of silver and tiny delicate engraving tools that were like fish bones. He was sitting at the desk squinting through a jeweller’s eye, so he hadn’t noticed me. I coughed, and he still didn’t notice.

“Nornuk?” I said, and he was startled so badly that his jewller’s eye fell from his face, his tiny delicate chisel made a scraping noise against the silver hoop he’d been working on. He said something that sounded a lot like a swear word, and the goblins sitting around him all looked up from their work. They looked from him to me and narrowed their eyes. “Nornuk the Wizard?” I asked. Finally the goblin I’d come all this way to find looked up at me, but his eyes were as narrow and suspicious as the others. “Do you speak English?” I asked.

“Yes. Do you speak Gobbledegook?” he replied.

“I’ve come to offer you an apology,” I said, bracing myself for his stubborn, bitter attitude.

“What?” he said, and his eyebrows twisted themselves into a look of surprise.

“You heard me,” I snapped, aware that dozens of goblin pairs of eyes were boring into me.

“I’ve never heard of a witch apologising to a goblin before. Do you know what an apology means to a goblin?” he said.

“Well, technically I’m bringing the apologies of a wizard. And yes, I know what an apology means to a goblin. So does he. He hoped that you’d remember what it means to a human.”

“Ah yes. Humans like these things, don’t they. Pretty words and meaningless sentiment,” he said, turning back to his engraving. He picked up his jeweller’s eye and inspected the damage done to his work, tutting to himself. “Who is he, anyway?”

“William Grey,” I said, and was rewarded with the jeweller’s eye falling from his face once more.

“He thinks an apology will make up for what he did to me?” he said angrily, staring up at me with hateful eyes.

“He wants to make it up to you. He’ll give you full credit for what you did. You would receive all the royalties of the book, all the sales profits, all the commissions. Every copy would be recalled and replaced with a copy bearing your name at his expense. And he’s not exactly rolling in money at the moment,” I said. Nornuk stroked his chin, his long nails scraping against his waxy flesh.

“What’s in it for him?” he asked.

“I won’t lie to you-” 

“So he does want something. I knew it,” he interrupted.

“He wants your help again,” I said, muttering softly as I glanced around at the goblins still looking at me.

“So he can steal from me once more? So he can get credit and fame and wealth and I’ll return to this?” he snapped.

“This isn’t the kind of job where there’ll be any credit, or fame,” I said softly, “This is the kind of job that nobody should ever find out about. But there’ll be wealth, and your book will finally be credited to you,” I said.

“Nobody should ever find out, you say?” he looked up at me curiously now.

“We should talk about it later. What time do you finish?”

He looked down at his work, picking up the delicate silver hoop and turning it over in his hands thoughtfully. He tossed it back down to the desk and started tidying up paperwork.

“I suppose now is as good as ever,” he sighed, “We can go to my place, nobody will hear what we’re saying. I live in apartment 12, Geode Court. Just off Pyrite Street. It’s about a half hour walk.”

“Do you know a pub we can go to? Somewhere closer?” I asked.

“I know somewhere, yeah.” 

I waited for him to organise his desk, stuffing some scrolls into a briefcase and putting on his coat. I followed him out of the department, down the maze of corridors and into the lift. Sure enough, he operated it just by moving his finger across the metallic panel. It was horribly claustrophobic with Nornuk in there with me, and I squashed myself into one corner. As we went up, I saw Nornuk looking out with longing at the library chambers.

“You wish you worked up here?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you? This is the legacy of our race! It is the most important of any work. The men and women working up here are shaping the future of the world!”

“And the pay is higher, I suppose?” I said.

“Well, yes,” he admitted.

We walked out of the library and once more into the street, and I snapped my goggles back in place over my eyes. He led us through the maze of tunnel-roads to a less bustling, classy part of town. There were less shops and more townhouses, reaching from the floor to the cavern ceilings. Eventually even these gave way to apartment buildings with cracked walls, fungus and algae growing out of the rough-hewn paving slabs. We went past workshops spewing out coloured smoke and spontaneous sparks from chimneys that collected in the unventilated streets, filling the spaces with noxious fumes. Amongst tall fungus farms –towers of scaffolding heavy with fleshy growths being tended by a goblin in dungarees – there was a little squat tavern with frosted windows and incense burners on either side of the door. It had been a twenty minute walk, not much closer than his apartment must have been. 

I ducked through the doorway, banging my head. The goblins inside turned to look at me, all conversation and the piano music ceasing at once. Someone coughed in the tense silence. I ignored it, getting a table at the back while Nornuk bought us drinks. I was glad I could stare out from behind my goggles at the goblins around the room. The conversation started up slowly again, the piano-player starting a new tune on the out-of-tune piano. The air was thick with pipe-smoke, and the stench of the manure on the fungus farms nearby. Nornuk came over with two ceramic mugs of something steaming.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Hot mushroom wine,” he said, “It’s delicious.”

“Good grief, it tastes like warm alcoholic feet!” I gasped, swallowing the foul liquid.

“So, what’s the job?” he said, ignoring my complaint.

“Well, it’s quite complicated. A short while ago I was in Durmstrang, and I discovered a mechanical thought-machine. It was the size of… well, my head I suppose, but layered inside with infinite space. The Russians were going to be used to control an army of clockwork soldiers, using wormhole magic like those enchanted trunks. I stole the machine, leaving their army useless. The Department of Mysteries is trying to reverse-engineer all of its mechanisms and components, and a strange, new kind of war is brewing. It’s also become sentient and suicidal. William says the space inside is so twisted up or whatever, that if it’s mishandled or abused, it’ll destroy the planet. It sounds ridiculously dramatic, but either way it needs to be destroyed, safely and secretly. That’s the job. William says you’re the best person for it. Wormhole arithmancy and runes and stuff, right?”

Nornuk paused for a long time while he digested everything I’d told him. He took several gulps of the disgusting drink.

“Are you joking?” he asked finally.

“It’s an unusual story, yes,” I said.

“You want to go against the Ministry?”

“Only because they’re in my way.”

“Bloody hell,” he said as he stared at my face, looking for my eyes inside the goggles, noticing the determined tension in my lips. “So, I guess you want a portal-feed into the dynamic spatial environment, to introduce something toxic? Like a replicating acid? We need something that’ll take it apart from the inside without collapsing the multi-phasic layering, so maybe a customised dissolution spell would be more appropriate.”

“I don’t see why we can’t just fire it into the sun. But I think what you said is what William wants to do, too.”

“I don’t know. If the Ministry wizards know what they’re doing, they’ll be able to detect our intrusion into the space-matrices. And then who knows what they’ll do. I don’t want to go to Azkaban! They say it does strange things to a man,” he said, looking down into the drink anxiously, “You know what they do to goblins in that place?”

“It’s fine, we’ll never get caught,” I said, trying to reassure him.

“If you’re not going to drink that, can I have it?” he asked, not waiting for my answer and seizing the ceramic mug from me.

“Even if we  _ were _ caught, which isn’t going to happen, you could just lie and say you didn’t know what you were doing. Legilimency and truth potions don’t work on goblins. You’ll be fine.”

“Torture does, though. But either way, it’ll be Grey that takes the fall?” Nornuk muttered, finishing his own mug of hot mushroom wine and starting on mine.

“You could blackmail him with this information, yes,” I said, angrily. I was hoping the goblin wouldn’t have ever realised the position of power he’d be in, but I had underestimated his deviousness. “What would be the point? You’d gain nothing from it.”

“Satisfaction, maybe,” Nornuk muttered, drinking again.

“That seems petty. If you want my opinion, you’d get more satisfaction from the money and fame. It would get you out of that lowest basement, eh?” I said.

“Out of the basement is good,” he sighed.

“You could get a nice house, start your own research company, have your own account at the Library of Records, right?” I said, smiling sweetly and slowly drawing languid circles on the table-top with one outstretched finger.

“That sounds amazing. And women, lots of women!” he said energetically, drinking so suddenly that some of the mushroom wine spilt down his misshapen chin.

“Yes, lots of women. A woman for every day of the week, eh,” I said, grinning.

“Damn right!” he said happily.

“So will you do it? Will you help William?”

“Yeah, alright. What happens next? What do you need me to do?”

“Well, go to William’s house. The sooner the better. He’ll tell you all about what he needs. I can apparate us there once we’re on the surface, if you’d like?” I said. Nornuk looked down into his empty mug, licking his lips and wondering if it had been a good idea to drink so much before being called upon to theorise highly complicated magic.

“Do we have to go now?”

“We’re against the clock, Nornuk. Every second that goes past is one that the Ministry and the Russian’s Departament Mastera might have used to start a war or something.”

“Alright, fine, let’s get going then,” he said, and we left the pub, “How did you get down here?”

“I took the train from the London Underground,” I said. Nornuk let out a disbelieving snort of laughter.

“What? That thing is a death-trap built by wizards. We can take Shaftsbury Shaft,” he said, and I muttered angrily to myself about the informant who’d told me to take the train.

The walk back to Shaftsbury Shaft took longer than it should have – I was walking with a tiny-legged goblin wobbling down the streets, reasonably drunk. The wine had been strong and his body was small. Shaftsbury Shaft itself was a slow lift, about twenty feet square with rows of chairs that chugged noisily upwards, making conversation impossible. It went up through the layers of London, and finally we emerged into the evening twilight as the doors slid open once more. I was astonished to find myself on the roof of a building overlooking Piccadilly Circus. The traffic noise was echoing up from the street, filling the air with the squeal of brakes and the growl of engines spewing out smog. The lift shaft must have been enchanted to penetrate the core of this building without anyone noticing. Or maybe the owners and operators of the building were involved, and this construction was an elaborate front. The other goblins got out of the lift and descended stairs on either side of the shaft, down into the building below us to take a variety of secret paths and magical routes into the tangle of London. I peered over the edge of the handrail at the edge of the roof, looking down at the iconic Piccadilly Circus and trying to figure out which building we were on top of.

“Ripley’s Believe It Or Not,” I finally concluded, “I should have known.”

We apparated over to William’s house. The atmosphere was frosty as we stepped through the front door. I stuck around, supervising the tense alliance. I couldn’t understand most of what they talked about – they kept it entirely impersonal and professional, exchanging almost no conversation beyond the matter at hand. I won’t go into the details, because the meeting was hours long, very boring and almost entirely esoteric. William seemed to be becoming more and more pleased about their theories and experiments while Nornuk was growing quieter, more narrow-eyed and thoughtful. The gregariousness that the mushroom wine had encouraged was wearing off. When they were finally done, William produced the paperwork to sign over every element of the book, including contractual provisions for the other contributors. Nornuk signed it all greedily, happily, but had to decency not to make any gloating comments. Now letters would be sent, funds exchanged between accounts, and the publisher would have one of the busiest and most embarrassing product recalls of their long corporate history. He packed his copy of the forms into his briefcase.

I said I’d apparate Nornuk back to the Shaftsbury Shaft, and so we left my friend to continue his work.

“So, do you still hold a grudge?” I asked him, staying with him while he waited for the next lift to arrive. The wind was picking up, blowing freezing night air across the rooftops and in the dark sky there were low clouds gathering, coloured brown by the streetlights.

“Well, I’ve got what’s mine, certainly, but that still doesn’t compensate me for the crime itself.”

“Seriously? You’re going to get wealth and fame now, and William is going to encounter a fair amount of public humiliation about the misunderstanding. That should compensate for the crime, surely? It’s not as if he even stole your work on purpose!” I insisted. He gave me a sidelong glance.

“His intentions don’t matter, only his actions.”

“His actions made it right!”

“Only because he needed my help.”

“What would it take, if he needed your help again?”

“He won’t,” Nornuk grinned as the lift arrived. The doors hissed open with a squishy hydraulic noise and the goblins inside disembarked, looking up into the sky warily. I wondered if it was because they suffered from mild agoraphobia or just because they thought it might rain.

“So, you gave him everything he needs?” I asked.

“For all the good it’ll do him,” Nornuk said as he got onto the lift.

“Remember, you can’t tell anyone about this job,” I said with a sinking feeling.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. The lift doors beeped and hissed shut behind him, and the chamber descended through the enchanted shaft, returning to the secret city beneath London.

“Oh dear,” I sighed.

I waited for the next lift and followed him down, back into Lin’Big, replacing my goggles. Even in the underground city that was completely devoid of sunlight there was a distinct sense of night-time. The neon lights were glowing brighter, but lamps and dim candles in the windows were being extinguished. I saw several goblin women skulking in the darkness wearing feather boas that drowned their tiny bald heads and fishnets on their squat legs. More goblins were wandering around, stinking of mushroom wine and stronger spirits. I tracked down Pyrite Street, which wasn’t easy – I didn’t want to ask directions in case any of the goblins would remember me, so I had to use locator spells. Discreetly. As much as goblins resent humans, they resent humans using magic even more.

Eventually I found Pyrite Street, and Geode Court was halfway down. I stuffed my long coat into my handbag that was magically bigger on the inside. I was glad to be rid of it, in truth. Beneath the coat I was wearing knee-high boots with only a small wedge heel, black combat trousers, a leather belt and a black long-sleeve cotton top beneath an enchanted contour vest. From my bag I pulled out a pair of black gloves that strapped up over my forearms, two short knives that I slipped down the inside of my boots and a black woollen hat that I stuffed my hair into. I lengthened the strap of my handbag magically and then split it, turning it into a very small backback, zipping it up and putting it over both shoulders.

I’ll be honest, I don’t often dress up this much to break in somewhere. I’d been expecting to have to kidnap Nornuk, bundling him up with rope and stuffing him into my magical handbag. I hadn’t needed to, of course. But now I needed to break into his apartment, and I was happily still dressed appropriately. This particular break-in was related directly to highly illegal, treasonous affairs that I would never allow to be discovered. It was worth taking seriously. The goggles I was wearing had another function, a setting that would let me see through walls, which I was using to spy on Nornuk inside his apartment. He was writing a letter, which was bad news. He had an expression on his face that is the goblin equivalent of joy. I needed to act quickly, before he had a chance to send that letter.

Getting into his apartment with him inside, and nobody hearing my intrusion, wasn’t difficult. I summoned a rope and made the glass from his bathroom window vanish – the only other room in his apartment. I waited until there was nobody in the street, checking the buildings that overlooked it and finally climbed up the brick wall beneath his window. I clambered into his bathroom silently, despite nearly stumbling over the tiny toilet and the little sink. Then I silently entered the other room, ducking under the doorframe as usual. From just past the door I shot a petrification spell at him, freezing him as he wrote the letter. I walked up behind him, peering at the writing. Sure enough, it was written in English and not Gobbledegook. It was a letter offering to tell the Department of Mysteries who was going to sabotage them in exchange for money.

“Really, Nornuk?” I asked rhetorically, “You didn’t have enough? You could have just settled for the fame, the money and the women. You fool, you brought this on yourself,” I said sadly. But I didn’t say anything else. If I had, that would have been gloating. I wasn’t proud of what I had to do. I wasn’t even happy about it. I’m not an evil person, after all.

But I couldn’t allow this petty, greedy creature to implicate me in something that the Ministry would make me disappear for, despite my usefulness to them. So I tied him up with more summoned rope while he was still petrified and unzipped my bag, expanding the opening magically and stuffing Nornuk inside. I took the letter he’d been writing along with several of the pieces of paper beneath it, until I was sure no indentations were left in the pad. I took his copy of William’s contract from the briefcase and closed it again, then had a second thought and took the briefcase itself as well, tossing both items into my bag. I zipped it up again and slung it over my back, not being particularly careful to keep the bag stable as it swung around my body. I couldn’t see anything else relevant, so I made sure the door was locked as if he’d never come home and used the magical rope to abseil down from the window. I left behind no trace that I had ever been there as I removed the ropes and replaced the pane of glass in his bathroom window. Honestly, I had briefly thought about leaving a suicide note for his loved ones, copying his handwriting from the letter he was going to write. But I’d have had no idea what to say, and a goblin suicide note written in English would have raised suspicion.

It took several days before William’s efforts to sabotage the Russian clockwork brain bore fruit. Nornuk’s body never turned up. William stuck to his commitment about recalling the books and reissuing them with name of Nornuk the Wizard where his had been, along with several other contributors. But the royalties and payments from the publisher mostly reverted back to William, in accordance with goblin law.


End file.
